The LiPower Shield allows you to connect one of these 3.7V Lithium Polymer batteries which it will boost up to 5V and connect to your Arduino board's 5V pin. The on-board MAX17043G+U IC is connected to the I2C lines (A4 and A5) so that your project can monitor its own power supply. The configurable alert interrupt pin on the MAX17043G+U IC is broken out to D2 which will activate when the LiPo gets to 32% or lower.

The charging circuit is configured to charge the LiPo at 100mA, but by adding a resistor to the supplied through-holes you can boost this to 500mA. There is a mini-USB port on the shield which allows you to charge the battery from a USB power source, or you can supply a separate regulated 5V source on the "charge" header.

Note that you will have to solder header pins to this shield before you can plug it into your Arduino board. Header pins are not included; see the options at the bottom of this page.

WARNING

This shield never should be connected to a battery when the Arduino is connected to a PC via USB. Doing so can damage the PC, the Arduino and/or this shield.